


Ink Stained Heart

by JessicaPendragon



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaPendragon/pseuds/JessicaPendragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke keeps a notebook she refuses to show Fenris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ink Stained Heart

Hawke keeps a notebook she refuses to show Fenris. She brings it with her to every lesson and scribbles on the pages while he repeats phrases and lines with growing precision. Whenever he leans over to catch a glimpse she clutches it close to her chest and frowns.

“Not yet.”

“When then?”

“When you can read a whole chapter of Varric’s novel without making a mistake.”

“The whole book is a mistake,” he grumbles and she laughs. The sound curls and dips, more confounding than anything written and he finds she is more interesting than any story. So he wraps strange words around his tongue as she smiles soft and warm, a translation he has yet to decipher completely.

-

Fenris reads Varric’s newest chapter as Hawke lays still in bed, bruised and tired, if only for the distraction. They call her Champion, savior of the city, but she is no invincible hero of legend no matter how the dwarf might paint her story.

The sight of her in such a state aches in his heart like a quill pushed too hard into parchment. Years of lessons have revealed what this feeling bursting at the seams is inside, but he is still not sure how to pronounce it correctly. How to tell her he loves her with the right inflection so it sounds real and not fiction.

He barely notices he’s finished until he catches her proud smile flashing against too pale skin. “Perfect,” she says. “I do believe I made you a promise.”

She lifts a hand to point at the night table and the leather bound book of secrets sitting there. Fenris takes hold of it and turns to the first page and does not understand.

It is the same phrase repeated over and over, sometimes in elegant swirls, other times in big bold letters. Sometimes small and cramped, sometimes large and greedy. Every line is covered and as he flips through more of the same is revealed until it all becomes a blur. On the last marked page it is written only once, scrawled across the page, ended by a period as if it is undisputed fact.

_I love you._

Many words have given him pause, but these three small things seem beyond translation. There is more meaning in them than the countless passages he’s read before. He leans over to the table and grabs hold of the quill there. Beneath her watchful gaze, Fenris dips it into the growing well inside his heart and with jilted but sure strokes adds his own line beneath hers.

_I love you too._


End file.
